Contributed by: S.P.

Krishna kishore

E- mail ID: perumbuduri.kishore@wipro.com

Implementation Site: GE Money Servicing, ILabs

Introduction & S.A.N Connectivity

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Virtulization

Virtualization is an abstraction layer that decouples the physical hardware

from the operating system of computers to deliver greater IT resource
utilization and flexibility. Virtualization allows multiple virtual machines, with
heterogeneous operating systems (for example, Windows 2003 Server and
Linux) and applications to run in isolation, side-by-side on the same physical
machine.

VMWare Infrastructure

With VMWare Infrastructure, IT departments can build a virtual datacenter

using their existing industry standard technology and hardware. Users do not
need to purchase specialized hardware. In addition, VMware Infrastructure
allows users to create a virtual datacenter that is centrally managed by
management servers and can be controlled through a wide selection of
interfaces

VMWare Components

• VMware ESX Server — Production-proven virtualization layer run on

physical servers that allows processor, memory, storage, and
networking resources to be provisioned to multiple virtual machines.

• VMware Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) — High-performance

cluster file system for virtual machines.

• VMware Virtual Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP) — Capability

that enables a single virtual machine to use multiple physical
processors simultaneously.

• VirtualCenter Management Server — Central point for configuring,

provisioning, and managing virtualized IT infrastructure.

• VMware Virtual Machine — Representation of a physical machine by

software. A virtual machine has its own set of virtual hardware (for
example, RAM, CPU, network adapter, and hard disk storage) upon
which an operating system and applications are loaded. The operating
system sees a consistent, normalized set of hardware regardless of the
actual physical hardware components. Vmware virtual machines
contain advanced hardware features, such as 64-bit computing and
virtual symmetric multiprocessing.

• Virtual Infrastructure Client (VI Client) — Interface that allows

administrators and users to connect remotely to the VirtualCenter
anagement Server or individual ESX Server installations from any
Windows PC.

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 • Virtual Infrastructure Web Access — Web interface for virtual
machine management and remote consoles access.

• Hosts - A host is the virtual representation of the computing and

memory resources of a physical machine running ESX Server.

• Cluster - When one or more physical machines are grouped together

to work and be managed as a whole, the group called as Cluster.
Machines can be dynamically added or removed from a cluster.

• Resource Pools – Resources Pools are the hierarchy of partitions of

Computing and memory resources from hosts and clusters. Provide a
flexible and dynamic way to divide and organize computing and memory
resources from a host or cluster. Any resource pools can be partitioned into
smaller resource pools at a fine-grain level to further divide and assign
resources to different groups, or to use resources for different purposes.

• Datastores – Datastores are virtual representations of combinations

of underlying physical storage resources in the datacenter. These
physical storage resources can come from the local SCSI disks of the
server, the Fiber Channel SAN disk arrays, the iSCSI SAN disk arrays, or
NAS arrays.

With VMware Infrastructure, IT departments can build a virtual datacenter

using their existing industry standard technology and hardware. Users do not
need to purchase specialized hardware. A VMware virtual machine offers
complete hardware virtualization. The guest operating system and
applications running on a virtual machine do not need to know about the
actual physical resources they are accessing (such as which physical CPU
they are running on in a multiprocessor system, or which physical memory is
mapped to their pages).

• CPU Virtualization - Each virtual machine appears to run on its own

CPU (or a set of CPUs), fully isolated from other virtual machines.
Registers, the translation look-aside buffer, and other control
structures are maintained separately for each virtual machine. Most
instructions are executed directly on the physical CPU, allowing
resource intensive workloads to run at near-native speed. The
virtualization layer also safely performs privileged instructions
specified by physical CPUs.

• Memory Virtualization - A contiguous memory space is visible to

each virtual machine even though the allocated physical memory
might not be contiguous. Instead, noncontiguous physical pages are
remapped and presented to each virtual machine. With unusually
memory-intensive loads, server memory becomes overcommitted. In
that case, some of the physical memory of a virtual machine might be
mapped to shared pages or to pages that are unmapped or swapped

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 out. ESX Server performs this virtual memory management without the
information the guest operating system has, and without interfering
with the guest operating system's memory management subsystem.

• Network Virtualization - The virtualization layer guarantees that

each virtual machine is isolated from other virtual machines. Virtual
machines can talk to each other only via networking mechanisms
similar to those used to connect separate physical machines. Isolation
allows administrators to build internal firewalls or other network
isolation environments, allowing some virtual machines to connect to
the outside while others connect only via virtual networks through
other virtual machines.

Storage Area Network (SAN) Concepts

A SAN presents shared pools of storage devices to multiple servers. Each

server can access the storage as if it were directly attached to that server. A
SAN supports centralized storage management. SAN make it possible to
move data between various storage devices, share data between multiple
servers, and back up and restore data rapidly and efficiently.

SAN Components

SAN consists of one or more servers attached to a storage array using one or
more SAN switches. Each server might host numerous applications that
require dedicated storage for applications processing.

• Fabric - A configuration of multiple Fibre Channel switches connected

together is commonly referred to as a SAN fabric. The SAN fabric is the
actual network portion of the SAN. The connection of one or more SAN
switches creates a fabric. The fabric can contain between one and 239
switches. (Multiple switches required for redundancy.) Each FC switch is
identified by a unique domain ID (from 1 to 239). Fibre Channel
protocol is used to communicate over the entire network. A SAN can
consist of two separate fabrics for additional redundancy.

• SAN Switches - SAN switches connect various elements of the SAN

together, such as HBA, other switches, and storage arrays. Similar to
networking switches, SAN switches provide a routing function. SAN
switches also allow administrators to set up path redundancy in the
event of a path failure, from a host server to a SAN switch, from a
storage array to a SAN switch, or between SAN switches.

Connections:

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 • Host Bus Adapters and Storage Processors – Host servers and
storage systems are connected to the SAN fabric through ports in the
SAN fabric.
 A host connects to a SAN fabric port through an HBA.
 Storage devices connect to SAN fabric ports through their
storage processors (SPs).

Types of Storage supported by VMWare

Datastores can reside on a variety of storage devices. You can deploy a

datastore on your system’s direct-attached storage device or on a networked
storage device. ESX Server supports the following types of storage devices:

• Local — Stores files locally on an internal or external SCSI device.

• Fibre Channel — Stores files remotely on a SAN. Requires FC

adapters.

• iSCSI (hardware initiated) — Stores files on remote iSCSI storage

devices. Files are accessed over TCP/IP network using hardware-based
iSCSI HBAs.

• iSCSI (software initiated) — Stores files on remote iSCSI storage

devices. Files are accessed over TCP/IP network using software-based
iSCSI code in the VMkernel. Requires a standard network adapter for
network connectivity.

• Network File System (NFS) — Stores files on remote file servers.

Files are accessed over TCP/IP network using the NFS protocol.
Requires a standard network adapter for network connectivity. ESX
Server supports NFS version

How Virtual Machines Access Storage

When a virtual machine accesses a datastore, it issues SCSI commands to the

virtual disk. Because datastores can exist on various types of physical
storage, these commands are packetized into other forms, depending on the
protocol the ESX Server system uses to connect to the associated storage
device. ESX Server supports FC, iSCSI, and NFS protocols.

SAN Topologies

Following Picture illustrates a fabric topology. Other SAN topologies include

point-to-point (a connection of only two nodes that involves an initiator or a
host bus adapter connecting directly to a target device) and Fibre Channel
arbitrated loop (FC-AL, a ring topology consisting of up to 126 devices in the
same loop).

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How Virtual Machines Access Data on a SAN
A virtual machine interacts with a SAN as follows:

 When the guest operating system in a virtual machine needs to

read or write to SCSI disk, it issues SCSI commands to the virtual
disk.

 Device drivers in the virtual machine’s operating system

communicate with the virtual SCSI controllers. VMware ESX Server
supports two types of virtual SCSI controllers: BusLogic and LSI
Logic.

 The virtual SCSI controller forwards the command to VMkernel.

 VMkernel performs the following operations:

o Locates the file in the VMFS volume that corresponds to the

guest virtual machine disk.

o Maps the requests for the blocks on the virtual disk to blocks on
the appropriate physical device.

o Sends the modified I/O request from the device driver in the
VMkernel to the physical HBA (host HBA).

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  The host HBA performs the following operations

o Converts the request from its binary data form to the optical
form required for transmission on the fiber optic cable.

o Packages the request according to the rules of the FC protocol.

o Transmits the request to the SAN

 Depending on which port the HBA uses to connect to the fabric, one
of the SAN switches receives the request and routes it to the
storage device that the host wants to access.

From the host’s perspective, this storage device appears to be a specific disk,
but it might be a logical device that corresponds to a physical device on the
SAN. The switch must determine which physical device has been made
available to the host for its targeted logical device.

Volume Display and Rescan

A SAN is dynamic, so the volumes that are available to a certain host can
change based on a number of factors including:

 New volumes created on the SAN storage arrays

 Changes to LUN masking
 Changes in SAN connectivity or other aspects of the SAN

VMkernel discovers volumes when it boots; and those volumes may then be
viewed in the VI Client. If changes are made to the LUN identification of
volumes, you must rescan to see those changes. During a rescan operation,
ESX Server automatically assigns a path policy of Fixed for all active/active
storage array types. For active/passive storage array types, ESX Server
automatically assigns a path policy of MRU (Most Recently Used).

ESX and SAN Connectivity in iLABS Data Center.

At present two ESX Server are present in iLABS Data Center. These two
Servers are connected with SAN Box without SAN Switch. Each server
having 39.75 GB In-build iSCSI Storage. 1.3 TB from SAN Storage is
configured for the Cluster ‘VM Cluster’. SAN Device management IP is
3.142.42.246.

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SAN Storage is configured in four extents as given below.

Extent Size in GB
Vmhba1:0:0:1 200.99 GB
Vmhba1:0:1:1 201.72 GB
Vmhba1:0:2:1 534.59 GB
Vmhba1:0:3:1 400.94 GB

As a policy all the VMs are to be created on SAN Storage.

VMWare Servers Details

Processor
Name IP Model Role
& RAM
Xeon
MYINSHYDESX0 3.142.42.2 Dell
Processor ESX Server
1 37 PowerEdge
8 GB RAM
Xeon
MYINSHYDESX0 3.142.42.2 Dell
Processor ESX Server
2 38 PowerEdge
8 GB RAM
• Virutal Virutal
Xeon
MYINSWHYDVC 3.142.42.2 Dell Center Server
Processor
S 39 PowerEdge • VMWare
8 GB RAM
Licensing Server

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 3.142.42.2
EMCSAN EMC SAN STORAGE BOX
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Hosts to Datastore (SAN) Connectivity

MYINSHYDESX01 to VMs Connectivity

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MYINSHYDESX02 to VMs Connectivity

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VMs to SAN Connectivity

Installed Virtual Machines in GEMS-ILABS (as on 31st May 2007)

Icon Definitions
PoweredOn Virtual Machine PoweredOff Virtual Machine VM
Template

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Host Naming Convention in GEMS-ILABS Data Center

In GE Money Servicing, Hyderabad the Naming Convention for servers are as

follows.

Ex for Windows Servers. MYINSWHYDDC001

Ex for Linux Servers. MYINLINHYDDB001

Ex for Servers in VMWare . MYINVSHYDDC001

Ex for Servers in VMWare . MYINVSHYDDC001

First two characters MY indicates Money Servicing

Second Two Characters IN indicates India

For Windows Servers

Fifth and Sixth Characters are SW stands for Server Windows

For Windows Desktop OS running Servers

Fifth and Sixth Characters are SD stands for Server Windows

For Linux Servers

Fifth to seventh Characters is LIN indicates Linux

We are not following separate naming convention to differentiate the Linux

and Windows Server in VMWare. But we kept a different style to differ
Desktop OSs running on VMWare.

For Servers OS on VMWare

Fifth and Sixth Characters are VS stands for VMWare Server

For Desktop OS running VMWare

Fifth and Sixth Characters are VD stands for VMWare Desktop

Rest of the Characters indicates Role of the Server and the Count for this kind
of server
Ex. DC001 and Ex. DC001

• However the total length of the name should not be more than 15
characters.

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